


flying (but maybe i'm dying)

by Mellaithwen



Series: Author's Favourites [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Guilt, Hurt Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Jason Todd is Robin, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 17:53:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21275285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: Titans 2x07 remix/AU- because Bruce needs to come save his boys.Jason’s been through a lot in the last couple days. He’s been kidnapped, tortured, thrown off of a building, and now he just wishes he knew how to stopfalling.(And he’s not the only one struggling)Jason blinks and he’s saved. He blinks and he’s on his knees, putting pressure on a strangers wound. He blinks and he’s in a car—running his hands through his hair to brush the broken glass loose, only to end up staring at his fingers, slack-jawed, when they come back bloody.No one else notices, so he keeps it to himself. He can barely feel it anyway…





	flying (but maybe i'm dying)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Florence & The Machine - Sky full of song, the best version of which is when [when florence is on top of a roof, during a storm in nyc...](https://youtu.be/UMENejKBcPk)
> 
> In terms of a trigger warning, this deals with the same level of suicidal ideation that the episode does, and delves a little deeper into Jason and Dick's issues therein. If you think this might have a detrimental effect on your own mental health, then please go no further. Be safe, dear readers.

Dick's slamming his fists into the glass but it won’t break. 

Jason can see the desperation in the former-Robin’s face as he keeps punching and punching and _punching_, but it’s no good and all he’s succeeded in doing is leave bloody smears in his wake from where his knuckles have split.

_Hang in there buddy_, Jason lip-reads, because even if he could have heard Dick’s harried voice through the glass, the wind this high-up is too loud, and the creaking of the platform Jason’s tied to is louder still. 

“Fuck,” he mutters for the hundredth time as the friction of the rope wrapped around his wrists burns. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_”

Deathstroke learnt from Dr Light’s mistakes and this time Jason’s tied too tightly for him to even attempt dislocating his thumbs to get free. His fingers feel thick and clumsy with the lack of circulation, and while for a second he panics that he can’t be Robin without his hands, an even darker thought starts to take hold in his brain—that he won’t need hands if he’s dead.

No, _no, _this can’t be it, this can’t be... he’s still a teenager for godsakes, he’s Batman’s— _okay _, fine—he’s Batman’s _sidekick_, he knows that, despite what he might have yelled in indignation at Slade earlier, but he’s fine with that because he’s _Robin. _More than that, he’s Jason fucking Todd. He didn’t survive the abuse at Willis’ hands, or living on the street on his own for years, just to lose it all to some pirate-freak in a mask, with a god-complex a mile-long.

_Dammit, _he doesn’t want to be a cautionary tale for whatever Titan come next. For whatever stray Bruce takes under his wing.

Jason thinks of the last time he said something similar in front of Alfred, and he thinks of the admonishment that followed. _“You’re his son,” _Alfred had insisted firmly, _“don’t ever think of yourself as any less than that.”_

He tries to take strength from those words now, but it’s _hard_. 

Bruce used to remind him daily that he was wanted, that he was loved—tiny insignificant things that spoke volumes to Jason—every term of endearment, every moment of praise, every admonishment of his cursing, hell, even just noticing he was _there_.

But then all of a sudden he’s being shipped off to San Francisco? How can Jason see that as anything _but _rejection? He’s so used to being left behind, he’s so used to being abandoned, he can’t imagine it being that hard to replace him as a son, let alone a Robin. _He’s done it before _, the cruel voice in his head echoes, the voice that sounds like his uncle when he’s had six drinks too many; when he’s angry, and mean, and spoiling for a fight with a goddamn ten year old. _He replaced Dick with you, and Dick was the golden child—the original Robin—you don’t stand a chance. _

Jason lets out another yell of frustration at being the damsel in distress, angry at his own stupidity. He never should have gone after Dr. Light on his own, he never should have said to Gar to split up. A selfish part of him had wanted all the glory for himself. 

He’d always intended on being back before the rest of the team had even known he was gone. He was going to parade into the tower to a resounding applause while he dragged the two-bit villain behind him. He was going to be redeemed for running his mouth on TV. 

_Forgiven._

Instead—when said-villain had been at the mercy of his fists—Jason had been grabbed by Deathstroke, held against the wall in a stranglehold, his feet scrambling in mid-air, until he’d blacked out, and woken up hanging by his wrists in a damp, dark basement, at the mercy of two psychos with a score to settle. 

_Bruce doesn’t think you’re ready yet, and neither do I, _Dick had said a few weeks ago when Jason had asked when he was going home. He’d bristled at the rejection at the time, but now he’s starting to think Dick was right. He can only imagine how Bruce is gonna chew him out when he finds out how stupid he’s been. 

Imagine. _Hope_. Pray?

Jason wonders if Dick has even told Bruce that he’s missing. He wonders if Batman’s en route to save him, or if he’s none the wiser—busy with his own streets to patrol, his own villains to fight. Too busy for some idiotic street-kid who should have known better.

He realises with a pang just how much he misses Gotham, and Bruce and Alfred. He wants to go back, he wants to go _home _. He’s tired of trying to prove himself to the team, but more importantly he’s tired of trying to prove himself to Dick. He never realised how much he wanted a big brother until one was being waved in front of his face—another familial bond being dangled just out of reach—but all Jason’s done is piss him off. The last conversation they had was an argument that ended with Jason on the floor, and he’s tired of being beat-down. He had enough of that as a child. Hank thinks he’s an asshole. Donna thinks he’s a joke. Even Rachel’s dark subconscious—or whatever the hell that black smoke was—wanted to choke him out. 

He’s not a part of the team. Not really. He just decided to crash the party when he realised Bruce was still stalking Dick’s tracker on the Bat-computer most nights. 

For all the good it did him. 

Now he’s tied up, freezing his ass off, and waiting for someone else to save him because he’d been too stupid to manage it himself. He can feel himself start to hyperventilate as once more the enormity of the shitstorm he’s in crashes over him like a wave. His whole body aches from head to toe. His head’s pounding—spinning even—and he itches all over from where his own blood has dried against his skin.

He shifts forward, and his ribs remind him once again that they’re on _fire_. He bites back a pain-filled groan and tries to move back to alleviate the pressure on his abdomen. As he does so he can feel where the rope has worn through his gloves, and the blood at his wrists starts to drip down. He struggles with renewed vigor in the hope that the tacky liquid might make it easier to slip his bonds. He has to get out of this, he has to get home. 

There’s a blast from inside the building, and Dick spins around to look at the fight between Kory and Deathstroke that Jason can’t quite see for the reflections on the glass. Dick slams his fist into it again, but it just won’t give.

_Just hang on_, he says, and Jason can see the pleading in Dick’s eyes, even if he can’t hear it in his voice. _Maybe he doesn’t hate me so much after all, _he thinks a little crazily, but when Dick steps away to help Kory, Jason can’t help but feel a frisson of fear as he does so. He doesn’t blame him for it, and deep down he knows it’s the right thing to do, but right now his Robin logic is seriously failing him, and he’s just a scared teenager who doesn’t want to be left alone. Who doesn’t want to die…

_You should be terrified, _Deathstroke had told him as he sharpened his katana on the whetstone in front of him. Like a giant dick. 

_Well congratulations asshole, _Jason thinks, because he can definitely feel it now— _the fear _Slade was talking about—and it’s only increasing with every second that passes while the scaffolding he’s tied to jolts in the wind. 

There’s a whirring of a helicopter overhead, and Jason looks up in time to be blinded by the bright white spotlight bearing down on him. He can’t see past the light, and he can’t tell if it’s friend or foe, but Jason’s not sure he’d mind either way right now if it meant a goddamn _save _.

“Come on, come on,” he mutters to his fumbling hands as they try to break free, to Dick and Kory as they fight Deathstroke inside, to Bruce, to Alfred, maybe even to God._ Save me. _

He’s seen what it looks like when people fall to their deaths. He’s seen it from above, and he’s seen it from below, and he has no desire in getting a front-row seat to either anytime soon. 

There’s another explosion from inside, and Kory and Dick are on the ground. But Deathstroke isn’t. He’s upright, standing with his back to Jason, and he’s holding the detonator. The rope at Jason’s wrists is almost loose—he just needs another second, he just needs another chance. Please, please, _please_.

He finally gets his hands free, but it’s too late. 

The charges on either side of him go off—a small beep, followed by an awful _boom _that bursts Jason’s ear-drums. He screams as the scaffolding careens downwards at an alarming rate, and all Jason can do is reach up desperately as broken shards of glass rain down on him. His stomach bottoms out in abject horror as the ground beneath him falls away, but somehow he manages to grab a hold of the ledge. His ears are ringing, and his shoulders burn from the strain of trying to hold on. 

And suddenly Dick’s there. Dick’s leaning over the edge. Dick’s calling his name. Dick’s reaching out and grabbing a hold of his hand, and they’re clinging to each other desperately. 

“Don’t let go!” He orders, and Jason wants so badly to do as he’s told for once, but his gloves are still slick with his own blood, and he’s slipping through Dick’s fingers. 

_“No!”_

He screams.

He falls. 

…

Dick can feel shards of broken glass biting into chest where he lies, half hanging out of the window, forgetting how to breathe. There’s no way Jason can survive a fall from this height. Dawn barely did when she fell last year, and that building was three storeys at most, not a fucking skyscraper. 

“Hold on!” He begs Jason, because he’s had had this nightmare before. 

As a child, he never once even considered the possibility of falling. He never once missed the bar. He fumbled a few times, even bent his fingers back once and had to go to the ER to get a splint, but he never ever missed completely.

If he had, his mother would have caught him, and his father would have caught her, and the net would have caught them all. 

Dick never considered it, until all of a sudden it was _all _he ever thought about. Every second in his social workers office he’d thought about it. Every moment sat in his bedroom in the Manor, he’d thought about it. At dinner, at training, at school, he’d thought about it. It consumed him. 

_The slow descent, and the sudden stop._

He’d thought about it when Rachel had reached out to him in the interrogation room at the precinct. He’d thought about it when Dawn had been thrown through the air by the Nuclear Family in D.C. He’d thought about it when Trigon had been messing with his head. 

And he’s thinking about it now, with Jason’s hands slipping through his grip at an alarming rate, until suddenly his fingers are clutching at thin air, and Jason’s falling, and every second feels like an age while Jason’s screams at being let go.

_The slow descent, and the sudden _...the sudden….

Jason doesn’t hit the ground. 

A black blur speeds across the sky—and whatever it is, it collides with Jason in mid-air, _hard, _catching him, and shielding him, before crashing onto a parked car down below; smashing it to smithereens. 

Dick can’t believe it, but he can see movement down below, and he scrambles to his feet without a second thought. There’s no trace of Deathstroke behind him, but there’s plenty of ground to cover between Dick and Jason, and there’s no time to lose. _What the fuck just happened? _He thinks over and over and over again as he races to street-level. 

He’s on auto-pilot now. He thinks he might have left his mind on that ledge screaming for Jason while he and Kory make a bee-line for the stairs, practically propelling down them as they go. Dick almost trips over himself in his haste to get down there, until finally he’s slamming through the entrance, and sprinting over to the mess of the crushed car. 

His relief is short-lived when he hears gunshots crack through the air. Two in quick succession, and for what feels like the hundredth time that night he can feel himself panicking. 

“Jason?!” He calls out as he rounds the corner to see an injured...not-Jason, thank god. Instead, there’s a young man slumped against the tyre of the car, wearing a black superman t-shirt stained with blood. Jason’s crouched beside him, looking pale, and shocky, and every-bit as terrified as he had when he was hanging from the ledge.

“What happened?” Dick asks because he can feel this entire situation getting away from him and he needs to regain some semblance of control. He wants to pull Jason into his arms and hold him until his brain stops spouting out images of dead gymnasts sprawled on the ground. He wants to shake the kid for being so stupid in the first place. He wants to reassure him that everything’s going to be okay, and he wants to bench him indefinitely. 

He wants to take care of his little brother, even if he’s resisted every iteration of the role thus far, but triage dictates that he should focus on the bullet-wounds first. 

“This guy just saved my life,” Jason says, sounding as shell-shocked as Dick feels. 

Whoever Jason’s saviour is, he’s been shot in the chest—twice—and he almost breaks Dick’s hand begging him not to take him to hospital before passing out. 

Kory’s calling the others on her cell, and Jason’s looking up at Dick like he expects him to fix everything, like he’s the leader, and it’s his job—he’s looking up at him in the way that Robin looks up at Batman. 

_You’re Bruce’s Robin not mine. _

Maybe that’s not quite true anymore. 

Dick takes a deep breath, he gives himself a whole second to think about how much he’s in over his head—how this is all his fault and how he needs to get Deathstroke once and for all— before he gestures for Jason to hand him his cape, and directs him to staunch the bleeding with it. 

“Okay, first things first, we gotta get off the street, and regroup.”

…

Everything passes Jason by in snapshots. 

He blinks and he’s falling, he blinks and he’s saved. He blinks and he’s on his knees, putting pressure on a strangers wound. He blinks and he’s in a car—running his hands through his hair to brush the broken glass loose, only to stare at his fingers, slack-jawed, when they come back bloody. 

No one else notices, so he keeps it to himself. He can barely feel it anyway.

He blinks and he’s in the Tower, swaying where he stands. His ribs are screaming at him, and he can’t take a deep breath without it hurting, a lot, and he knows that’s _bad _, but there’s a disconnect somewhere inside of him and he just doesn’t move. 

There’s a hand on his forehead, and Dawn’s saying something, Hank too, but it’s all just noise. He needs to...he needs to be...he needs to be somewhere else… he needs to—

Dick’s voice cuts through the din. 

“Dawn, we need you!” And she’s gone, and Hank’s watching him like he thinks he might bolt—and Rachel asks if he’s okay but he can’t answer that. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to answer that again. His brain feels slow. His body feels sluggish. 

He blinks and he’s falling, and he stumbles to his bedroom where he can close the door, and lock it, and hide away for as long as he needs to to survive. If someone calls after him, he doesn’t hear them.

Adrenaline had gotten Jason as far as the Tower, and sheer stubbornness had taken over since he’d watched Dick and Donna and Kory race off into the infirmary with his super-saviour in tow. 

But all that determination’s fading now. He blinks and he’s falling. He blinks, and he’s on his knees at the foot of his bed, and the clock says that over an hour has passed, and he’s still in his grimy Robin-suit, covered in sweat and dried blood, and he feels sick, and dizzy like the ground’s moving too quickly for him to stomach.

He blinks and he’s in the shower, and the water that’s swirling around his feet is tinged with blood. He doesn’t remember how he got there but now he’s sitting on the bench in the changing room holding a needle and thread. There’s a washcloth in his hand that smells like hydrogen peroxide, and the water in the bowl beside him is pink. There’s a new clean set of black stitches running from his knee up to his thigh, like tiny black ants on parade, and he covers it with gauze before getting dressed. He blinks. 

He grabs a clean shirt, but just as he goes to put it on, he catches a glimpse of his chest in the mirror—all mottled black and blue in the shape of fists—with new scars to add to the old, but better now that the blood has been washed away. _If he hurries, he can still make it to third period english lit without anyone asking any questio—_

He shakes his head, and closes his eyes for a second until the confusion passes. 

He takes a small breath_ — _because any deeper and he knows it’ll hurt _— _and tries to stand tall, wincing at the pain as he does so. He gives his reflection a sharp smile—he shows enough teeth to seem predatory, to stop even the kindest of teachers from getting too—_no stop it, there aren’t any teachers here. Stop it. _He can do this. He can play the part. He’s done it before, he can do it again. He’s fine. Everything’s fine. 

He blinks, and he’s back in his room, and he’s staring out the window as the sun starts to rise over the water. He wonders what jolted him out of his reverie this time, when he hears it again; the soft knocking from outside, and Gar’s voice calling out, “Jason? Can you open the door please?”

_Everything’s fine. I can do this. _

Mask in place, he does as Gar asks. He opens the door to find that his green-haired friend looks as exhausted as Jason feels, but he gives him a grin nonetheless. 

Jason blinks, and Gar’s in his room, sitting on his bed, blaming himself for what happened, but that’s not right, that’s not true, none of it is. It’s Jason’s fault, it was Jason’s plan, Jason’s idiocy, Jason’s kidnapping. Jason, Jason_, Jason. _

“No, hey, it’s all good.” He assures Gar, and a part of his brain feels like he’s eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation, like he’s watching it all from the other side of the room—and the imposter has his mannerisms down pat. Just like a real boy. He laughs at something Gar says, gives his shoulder a nudge when he still looks down. 

“It’ll take more than some one-eyed freak to put me down,” he says, a little louder than his bruised larynx would like, but it does the trick, and he can see the moment the lie hits the spot, and Gar’s shoulders look like a weight has been lifted. 

Meanwhile, through the window, and out over the San Francisco bay, Jason keeps falling, over and over and over again. 

…

Dick’s sat in the control room, watching four monitors at once when he hears a quiet shuffling behind him. He expects to find Rachel, or Gar there, because they haven’t been trained by the Bat and their sneaking leaves a lot to be desired—so he’s more than a little surprised to see that it’s actually Jason. He’s standing in the doorway, watching Dick with his arms crossed in front of him, clad only in sweats and a long sleeve shirt that’s been stretched over his knuckles. He’s barefoot, and Dick can’t be sure but he thinks the kid might be shivering… even so, he looks a lot better than the last time Dick saw him, but then he was covered in blood at the time so that’s not saying much. 

“_Hey _,” Dick says, because he’s been meaning to check in on him ever since they got back to the tower, but with everything else going on, and Deathstroke in the wind, he’d found himself diving into the hunt instead. “How are yo—” 

“You can’t find him, can you?” Jason interrupts, and Dick tries to not take the insult to heart—_you can’t find him, you can’t beat him, you can’t protect us, this is all your fault_—and he looks back at the monitors showing pictures and intel on the last known location of Slade Wilson. 

“I will.” Dick insists, and if Jason’s convinced he doesn’t say as much. He just hugs his arms closer to his chest, and looks down at the ground. He even goes as far as to shuffle his feet. There’s a silent beat before Dick intervenes once more.

“Are you okay? Did anyone take a look at you?”

Jason shrugs, before his eyes skitter back and forth, and he gives Dick half a nod that doesn’t exactly answer his question. His adam’s apple bobs up and down a few times before he asks; “does Bruce know?”

Jason sounds a little hoarse when he speaks, and Dick can’t tell if it has more to do with his frayed emotions, or the handprint-shaped bruise that’s wrapped around his neck and peeking out from just under his collar. 

_Does Bruce know?_

It would make sense wouldn’t it? For Bruce to be the first port of call when there’s a Robin in danger. Bruce, with his endless resources, and his knowledge, he’d have been invaluable to the search and rescue. 

Dick thinks about the amount of times he picked up the phone to call him in the last twenty-four hours, and then he thinks about the amount of times he’d hung up before the call could even connect. 

How do you tell a man that his son’s gone missing? That he’s been_ taken _? How do you tell someone that the kid you were supposed to protect, keep safe….how do you tell them you’ve failed so spectacularly? That you’re _still _failing. That Deathstroke is going after all of them, one by one, because of what Dick did five years ago. That for every second that passes, everyone around Dick is in more and more danger _because _of him. That it’s _his _fault Jason got hurt, that _he _put him in that position, that it hurts to even look at the kid knowing his pain could have been prevented _if Dick wasn’t a goddamn cold-blooded murd—_

“No.” He tells Jason as he clears his own throat to stop his own train of thoughts in their tracks. “I thought you might want to talk to him first?”

It’s not a complete lie but it might as well be. It certainly has more to do with Dick’s issues than he’s letting on, but Jason just nods silently, and tugs at his already over-stretched shirt sleeves, before pushing off of the wall he’s been leaning against, and wandering away once more. 

Dick thinks about calling after him, he even goes as far as to stand up, but he lets the kid shuffle away without a word, and hangs his head in shame instead. 

…

When he gets back to his room, Jason just stares at the bed, still made-up from the morning before. He considers crawling under the sheets and staying there forever, but he just ends up on the floor instead. He eases himself down to the ground with his back against the wall, and makes a point of looking at everything _but _the dirty, bloody, pile of armour and gauntlets that is the remnants of his Robin suit dumped at the foot of the bed. He moves to drag his knees up to his chest so that he can curl up and hide away from the world, but he stops when he feels the painful pull on his ribs. 

He thinks about going out to the kitchen to grab an ice pack but now that time’s creeping slowly towards the early afternoon he can hear the others milling around in the common area, and the thought of talking to anyone makes his skin crawl. 

It was bad enough trying to talk to Dick without feeling like he couldn’t decide between smashing the place to bits, or bursting into tears—and Jason actually _needed _information from Dick. 

He digs his phone out of his pocket, and squints at the painful difference between the brightness on screen compared to the dark of the corner where he’s slumped over. His eyes feel like they’re full of sand, and he rubs at them furiously until they hurt. For a second, with both eyes closed, he can hear Slade’s voice in the dark, making his ransom demand—calling him a sidekick. He can feel the scratchy material of the blindfold as it’s pulled taut over his eyes—and later, when he’d mouthed off one too many times, that same dirty rag had been shoved in his mouth. 

He shudders and gags at the memory and opens his eyes to look back down at his phone. 

Subconsciously, he’s already swiped through to the contact list, and his finger is poised over Bruce Wayne’s number. It would be so easy to call, to beg for forgiveness but...

He thinks about what Dick said earlier—how he was waiting for Jason to decide if Bruce should be involved or not. Jason has control over that much at least. It’s funny, when he was in Deathstroke’s clutches, when he was hanging from that stupid ledge, all he could think about was Bruce, all he _wanted _was to be back in the manor with him and Alfred, to be _home _, to be safe. 

But now? Now he doesn’t know how he can ever face Bruce again. He _failed_. He was reckless, and stupid, and he could have gotten Dick and Kory killed, not to mention the kid in the infirmary who ended up with a chest full of lead just for helping him. He’s poison, and anyone with good sense would have put him down already.

Jason selects the name on screen and when the contact information appears, he stares at the photograph assigned to his guardian. Jason had been introducing him to some ridiculous snapchat filters, and in the picture, Jason’s the one grinning like a loon, beside a far more reserved, although definitely bemused, Bruce with dog-ears and a small snout over his features. 

Jason brushes his thumb over the image, and he has to swallow hard to get rid of the lump in his throat. He roughly swipes the tears away from his cheeks as he lets his head fall back against the wall with a small_ thump_. He does it again even though it hurts. And again, and again. _Thump, thump, thump_. 

He feels like everything’s slipping away from him, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

“Fuck,” he whispers desperately to himself as he balls his hands into fists, and tries not to stare at the ring of rope burns wrapped around his wrists. He pulls his sleeves down to hide them, and lets the panic wash over him—the anxiety, the fear—he’s too tired to keep his head above the water any longer. 

What if he can’t go back to how things were? What if this is the final straw? What if this is the thing that gets Robin taken away from him? And without Robin, can he even stay in the Manor? They’re so intrinsically linked, he doesn’t see how one can work without the other. 

But Batman _needs _Robin, so if Jason gets benched, what then? Would he have to watch some other kid parade around in his suit? Or worse, would he get shipped off to some boarding school until whatever obligation Bruce felt he had to society to reform the tyre-thieving-street-rat was done with? 

He looks back down at the phone again, at the smiling faces from six months ago. 

He can’t be trusted with Robin, but without it? He’s nothing. He’s no one.

There’s a handful of texts and missed calls that he can’t bear to look at. He doesn’t even check who they’re from. He takes one last look at the photograph, before switching the phone off and throwing it across the room. He hears it skitter under the desk in the far corner, before he’s left with silence once more. 

He knows he’s just prolonging the inevitable, that the World’s Greatest Detective has more than one way of getting in touch, but Jason’s already falling, he doesn’t need another push. 

…

Back in the control room, Dick opens up yet another file on screen. He pours over his own notes and annotations on intel from five years ago in a desperate bid to see something now that he never saw back then. He ends up re-reading the same sentence for the third time, and sighs. To say he’s distracted would be an understatement.

His thoughts keep circling back to Jason. There’s no denying he’s been through a lot, and the more Dick thinks about it, the more he realises how little he actually knows about the younger Robin. He’s so good at talking the talk, but he never really...says much. 

Jason had framed his meeting Batman for the first time the way he frames everything; with a smirk and an offhand comment that kept him in control, and kept everyone else at arm's length. 

It’s a tactic Dick knows all too well, so he’d allowed Jason to have his secrets; his past was his past, and Dick had no right to it, except now he’s starting to second guess his own actions. He thinks about how quiet Jason had been when he was stood in the doorway; hugging his arms close to his chest as if making himself small enough would keep him safe. Nobody would notice he was there, and if no one knew he was there, then nobody could hurt him. Dick’s seen it with more victims than he can count, and he hates himself for not doing more. 

_Search complete _, the computer says in a tinny voice that’s strangely comforting, and Dick looks up to see _0 results _, once more. There’s no trace of Deathstroke’s activity anywhere, not even on the League’s radar. The former Robin curses under his breath. He has to find Slade, it’s the only way to make up for what happened to Jason. It’s the only way the kid will ever feel safe again—it’s the only way Dick knows how to fix the mess he’s made. 

And he has to fix it this time,_ he has to_. 

Just then Dick’s phone lights up with a text message, and he imagines hearing the sender saying it out like he’s right beside him in the Tower and not thousands of miles away in Gotham City.

_Burning the midnight oil?_

Bruce must have seen that Dick’s using the remote Batcomputer system, and all at once, his thoughts go into overdrive. Should he respond? Is it suspicious if he doesn’t, is it suspicious if he _does _? Is it a trick? It wasn’t so long ago that Dick was the one calling Bruce at two in the morning to ask for advice, but now it feels like he’s taken three steps backwards, and he has no idea what to do. 

“Ignoring me won’t make me go away.” Dick hears Bruce say and his head whips up to see his father standing in the control room. 

Except he isn’t there. Not really. 

“Go away,” Dick says quietly, because he knows running himself ragged can bring his demons to life, and this is just his brain telling him he has a job to do. That’s all. He puts his cell phone face down on the desk, and looks up at the monitors instead. 

“Why haven’t you called me?” The Bruce in his head asks aloud, and for some insane reason Dick finds himself humouring the hallucination by responding. 

“It should be Jason’s choice—”

“Bullshit.”

And that’s another way Dick knows it’s not really his father standing there. Bruce might curse occasionally, but he has too much control over every aspect of his life to do so flippantly, especially as part of an angry outburst. 

“You should have called me the second you knew Deathstroke was back,” Bruce continues before Dick has the chance to respond. “You should have told me when you couldn’t find Jason—”

“I was a little busy_ trying to save him._”

“How’s that going for you?”

Dick hears Jason’s scream as he falls in his memory and shudders. 

“Admit it,” Bruce says, “you were just too chickenshit to follow through.”

Dick bristles at the insult, but he squares his jaw, and enters a new command into the computer. He tries comparing all of the data he compiled last time, and Bruce—or not-Bruce that is—is silent for some of it, until there’s a note in the files regarding Jericho and Dick’s mind stutters. 

Bruce leans in close.

“There it is,” he says, a little cruelly, “there’s your greatest failure. That’s the reason you were too scared to call me, too scared to ask for help. Can’t risk anyone finding out about your dirty little secr—”

Dick jumps to his feet, and the chair he’s been sitting on flies backwards right through where the Bruce-mirage had been standing. The only resistance the chair meets is the wall as it slams against it because of course there’s no one there. 

Dick’s alone, and his chest is heaving with the last dregs of his anger. He wipes a hand down his face, and closes every file on the computer before heading for the showers. 

“You can’t run from this.” Not-Bruce taunts as he leaves. 

“Fuck you,” Dick whispers, even though he’s really only talking to himself.

...

Jason waits until it’s late before leaving his bedroom in search of pain relief. He can hear Gar and Rachel in the kitchen talking to each other, so grabbing any frozen compresses is out—but he knows there are ice-packs in the infirmary, as well as painkillers, so he heads there instead.

He stops stock-still in the doorway when he sees his saviour shifting on the bed in some kind of delirium. He’s muttering under his breath, and he’s pale and sweaty. The two pieces of gauze on his chest are a stark white compared to his almost translucent skin, and Jason finds himself fixating on what it looks like beneath. 

He’s seen bullet wounds before. He’s seen Bruce get shot (and he blamed himself for not being a good enough Robin for that one too) but he’s also seen Batman insist on staying awake throughout the procedure, while practically dictating to Alfred how to proceed, as if he wasn’t an expert in his own right. 

Alfred had told him to be quiet in a polite but firm manner of course, but that wasn’t the point. 

“—_re you okay?_” 

Jason must have zoned out—caught in the memory—because when he comes to Kory’s stood directly in front of him in the infirmary all of a sudden. She must have been sat down, out of sight, and calling his name for a while, but now she’s so _close_, and she’s reaching out to touch his shoulder. The gesture is clearly meant to be comforting but Jason can’t help but flinch away, and Kory in turn recoils as if she’s been burned. 

“I’m sorry.” She apologises and Jason all but chokes on the sudden lump in his throat as his blood pressure spikes with adrenaline. He feels like a tool, but his heart is beating fast enough to hurt his chest and make his stomach roll with nausea. 

She puts her hands down, palms up, and he’s not an idiot, he knows she’s trying to seem as non-threatening as possible, and he hates how relieved he feels—and how weak that makes him. So he does what he always does, he buries it down deep. He pretends it didn’t even happen, and instead, he asks about the guy on the bed. The machines at his bedside tell him his heart-rate is a little slow, and his oxygen outputs looking pretty shit, but he wonders if there’s some kind of infection making him shift restlessly on the bed.

“His name’s Connor.” Kory says, “he woke up a few hours ago, but….nothing since.”

“Is he gonna die?” Jason asks bluntly, and Kory looks more than a little troubled when she answers. 

“I don’t know.”

Jason nods. He appreciates that she isn’t pandering to him, but it’s hardly good news. He finds himself wondering if being able to fly might make Connor an expert in how to stop falling. Jason could use some tips, but none of that matters if he dies. 

And it’s all because of Jason. The list of people he’s hurt keeps growing and growing and suddenly the room feels too small, and he has to fight the urge to claw at his own throat as his anxiety starts to try and drown him on dry-land. He moves to leave when Kory’s voice drifts over to him once more. 

“Jason, has anyone taken a look at _you_?”

He scoffs, but she’s unperturbed. Time to pull out the big guns. 

“I’m good,” he insists, mask in place, smile at the ready—just like he did with Gar, just like he did with Dick. He puts as much energy into the lie as his sleep-deprived self can manage. “Hank gave me the all clear,” he says, because he’s noticed the distance between all of them lately, and he knows she won’t ask Hank for details. 

A moment passes before finally she nods, seemingly satisfied with his answer, and Jason makes a beeline for the exit.

_Connor, _Jason thinks when he arrives at the training room, and starts wrapping his fists ready for a fight.

_That’s the name of the guy who saved me. _

_That’s the name of the guy I got shot. _

He never should have let Deathstroke get the upper hand. He should have been aware of his surroundings in the tunnels. He never should have let someone sneak up on him, let alone knock him out and take him hostage. 

_You’re the price they pay. _

He programmes the sound system to as loud as it’ll go to drown out his memories, and he hits the bag, hard. He should have known better. _ Punch_. He should have fought harder. _Block, punch_. He should have listened to Dick when he said to stay put. He should have listened to Gar when he said not to split up. _Punch._He should have made it out of the basement. He shouldn’t have needed saving. _Punch, punch, duck. _He should have grabbed Deathstroke’s sword right out of his hands. He should have run. He should have—

“You all right?” 

Jason spares a glance to his left to see Dick standing there. He punches the bag again. 

“All good.” 

“It’s past midnight, you should probably take it easy.”

“I don’t want to take it easy, _I feel good _.” He insists. He lies. He _pushes_. He’s practically daring Dick to send him to his room like a little kid. Alfred would have just cleared his throat, before guiding Jason away from the bag, and back up the stairs to the Manor.

_“Now, now, Master Jason,” _he would say in the face of Jason’s whining, _“there will be ample time to destroy the punching bag tomorrow after you’ve had some sleep.”_

Kindness works wonders on him, he knows, but Alfred’s not here, and the Titans have certainly been lacking in compassion of late. 

Jason swallows against the lump in his throat, and he thinks about his phone again, switched off, dormant and discarded back in his room. Maybe he should have called them. Maybe it’s not too late...

He hits the bag again, on the side this time, another jab, and then another. He’s breathing heavily and his heart’s beating in time to the heavy metal that’s being churned out over the speakers. 

“That was quite the fall you took,” Dick reminds him, and Jason feels a chill run up his spine, because he knows. _He’s still there_. He’s still falling, and he can’t understand why he doesn’t just hit the ground already. 

He makes a dig at the fact that Dick wasn’t the one who saved him—_good thing Connor was there_—he can’t help it, it’s what he does. He pushes people away. He pisses over anything in his life that’s good—but when a look of anguish flashes across Dick’s face, Jason hates that he put it there. 

He regrets every damn word.

“I’m sorry,” Dick says, but Jason just turns away before he can put his foot in it even further. He takes a swing at the bag, relishes in the way his punch lands, and the reverberation travels all the way up through his arm, and shoulders, until suddenly he feels something _give _in his chest, and the grinding feeling has him doubled over in pain. He can feel Dick’s eyes on him, and he pants, hoping he can brush it off as sheer exhaustion—and that’s not even a lie. He hasn’t slept for two days now. His mind’s been in overdrive ever since the platform fell out from under him, ever since he was taken, and it’s not as if he got the chance to rest and recuperate in Deathstroke’s clutches either. Tied up, knocked around, taunted, and tortured—definitely not an environment conducive for R&R. 

He shudders. 

“You sure you’re alright?” Dick presses.

_No, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not—_

“Cut the crap,” Jason bites back in anger instead of asking for help. “Why don’t you just say what you really want to say, huh? That all this is my fucking fault for going out there alone.”

_Tell me I’m right _, he thinks as he tries to breathe through gritted teeth, _myfaultmyfaultmyfaul—_

“No, I don’t think that.” Dick says simply, and his expression hasn’t changed, he has no tell for Jason to call out the lie. He must actually believe it, the fool. 

Dick tells him to _rest up_, because he doesn’t know that it hurts to lie down, and he doesn’t know that for all of the falling Jason’s been doing when he’s awake, he’s actually terrified of what might be waiting for him when he finally sleeps. 

So he keeps punching the bag instead, long after Dick has left. He pushes through the pain in his ribs until it’s a pain in his arms too, his hands, his shoulders, until everything’s burning—_no matter what’s been taken you must be able to keep fighting, and win_—he keeps hitting the bag over and over again until his fist goes straight through the crack in the leather and sand pours out onto the ground at his feet. 

He’s still staring at the pile of grains on the ground when a voice drifts over to him.

“You know that’s coming out of your allowance,” Hank says from the doorway. 

He’s joking, and Jason knows that, but he doesn’t know how long he’s had an audience, and he’s in pain, and he’s angry, and he bristles at the tone Hank’s using.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jason says harshly in return. 

“Wow,” Hank says, and his voice has a patronising lilt to it now as he brushes past Jason to unhook the punching bag from the ceiling and lay it flat on the ground next to the mound of its own innards. “Not even a thank you for saving your life?”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Jason says as he leaves. “You didn’t do shit.”

He doesn’t stick around to hear Hank’s response, and he’s not sure he even believes his own words, he just wants to get out, fast, before he ends up spiralling even further.

He practically runs back to the safety of his own room, and as soon as he’s inside he locks the door behind him, and relishes in the click of the bolt as it slides across. 

_Hold on! Jason! Don’t let go!_

He slams his fist into the door, but it doesn’t make any difference, and he can still hear Dick calling out to him as his hand slips through his fingers. He finds the loudest, most inane record he has, and turns it up as loud as it will go. His hearing is still muffled from the explosion that caused his fall, but really he just wants to drown out the memory of Dick’s voice screaming his name. 

He barely hears it when Rose knocks, and when Jason’s every attempt at getting rid of her fails, she pushes her way into his room. He tries not to focus on on how vulnerable and crowded he feels now that she’s in _his _space. 

He defends Dick against her tirade when she tries to blame him for his inaction, but then she says something that makes the breath catch in his lungs. She tells Jason it wasn’t his fault. She echoes Dick’s sentiment from earlier, and now that’s two he has in the bank. 

He swallows the lump in his throat and lets her stay, and things are good, things are _great_, until they’re not. One minute they’re kissing, but then her lips brush against the cuts at the sides of his mouth and it stings, and all at once he’s reminded of how they got there, and what happened to him, and how it was Rose’s _father _that did that—and—and—and he stumbles backwards in a haze. 

“I’m sorry, don’t hit me.” 

He’s only half-joking. 

“It’s a thing that happened,” she assures him as she twirls her fingers through her hair, and flips through Dick’s borrowed record collection. “Don’t get stupid about it and it might happen again.”

He smiles to himself, almost in disbelief that the most kindness he’s had in the last three days has been from his kidnappers’ estranged daughter. 

But even that doesn’t last. 

It’s not long before he’s on the receiving end of her rage, like a switch has flipped, and Jason’s fumbling to catch up—she’s screaming in his face about her brother, and some kind of betrayal that he doesn’t understand, but he’s somehow being blamed for, and he tries to get more information, he tries to help, but he gets a door slammed in his face for his troubles.

And he’s falling. 

Again. 

And again, and again, and—

…

Dick recognises the church instantly.

The last time he was here, he’d been dressed as Robin, with Donna’s blood slowly drying on his gloves. He’d wrapped his own righteous rage around himself like an extra layer of armour, and he’d stood at the threshold of the place of worship, defiant, despite Jericho’s betrayed look, and Deathstroke’s taunts. 

Robin had jumped into the fray, headfirst, with no backup, and Jericho had paid for it with his life. 

“Ah, memories,” the Bruce in his head says, as he follows him past pew after pew, and questions his motives for the hundredth time. 

Deathstroke’s nowhere to be found. He lead him here, but the place is completely empty save for Dick and his ghosts.

“He’s lured you away from where you need to be,” Bruce says from beneath the pulpit, and Dick wonders, not for the first time, why the stupid fake Bruce won’t leave him alone already. 

He says as much aloud as his frustration boils over. He doesn’t have time for this. For every second that he wastes on the past, his enemy is gaining the advantage, and what then? He’s already killed one of Dick’s teammates, beaten one, kidnapped and abused another. He’s the shadow at their backs, he’s the monster under the bed and if Dick was even half the leader everyone else expected him to be, then he’d have put the bastard down years ago. 

Instead of leaving, Bruce just gives a voice to Dick’s deepest fears—his fears of being abandoned, of being left alone in the dark, screaming into the void and having it swallow every sound—of reaching out into the deep dark pit and having his fingers brush the very edge of mother’s hand—his father—Jason—but he always comes up empty. He always misses. He’s not strong enough, he’s not fast enough, and _motherfatherbrother_, they all fall—screaming as they’re gobbled up by the black, with no end in sight, and no net to catch them, no grapple to halt their descent. 

And all Dick can do is watch from the platform, from the window ledge, as the mess he made becomes their undoing. 

“You know how to get rid of me, you’ve known the whole time. You just have to tell the truth.” 

Bruce sounds kind now, and Dick starts to think it might be less of a hallucination and more of a memory of his first few months at the Manor—back when Bruce could always see through the walls he’d built up around himself. When he knew exactly what to say and how to say it. When just his reliable presence at his side was enough to calm the anxiety in Dick’s chest. Bruce was the immovable object between him, and the chasm left behind by his parents’ death. 

Maybe that’s why his mind’s gone there in the first place. 

He _listens _to Bruce, and his psyche clearly wants to be heard. 

Bruce reaches out to wipe a tear from his chin, and Dick definitely remembers that tender gesture from when he was younger. _It’s okay son, it’s okay_. 

He turns around, and Dick can see something on the altar catching the light. Bruce steps aside, and Dick takes a step closer. The faces of his teammates stare up at him on glossy photographs that have been spread out amongst the candlelight. Dick feels a sudden revulsion that Slade’s been surveilling them without them having realised, but then he looks again, and he sees the cut on Jason’s lip, and the bruises on his cheek. 

_Shit, _Dick thinks, _these are recent, _maybe a couple hours old at most, which means Slade could be in the Tower right now, finishing what he started. 

“Go home Dick,” Bruce orders, and Dick takes off running, praying under his breath that it’s not too late. 

...

“How fucked up are you?” Rachel’s voice demands from out of the fog surrounding Jason’s brain. 

He still hasn’t slept, he hasn’t eaten anything either. He found a candy bar in the pocket of his jeans at the bottom of his wardrobe, but it barely sat in his gut for five minutes before he threw it back up again. It’s like his whole body think it’s falling too, it’s not just in his mind. His stomach is doing backflips, and the ground’s shifting like he’s got vertigo. 

He blinks, and he’s falling, and all he can see every second of every day is the blur of the skyscrapers as he passes them by, and the earth rushing up to meet him. 

He wonders if he were to actually fall again that there might be some relief in finally hitting the ground. 

“All you do is give people reasons to hate you!” Rachel yells, and Jason thinks she has a point. Everyone _does _hate him. Even Bruce sent him away, and that’s someone who plucked him out the gutter, and gave him a home, and gave him a way to channel his rage, and a reason to…. _well, you know,_ live.

_Everyone hates me. I did this. I deserve this, it’s my fault. _

Except, he doesn't actually know what he’s being blamed for, and so he says as much—still caught in a fugue-like state of exhaustion. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The crosses on my mirror!” Rachel’s still screaming at him, and so Jason decides to try and match her volume as he wrenches his eyes away from the window. _From the fall. _

“I still don't know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

And suddenly there’s a deep, dark voice, that seems as if to invade every one of his senses. His ears ring with it, and there’s that fear Slade was warning him about—that red-eyed horror being channelled through Rachel, and aimed straight at him. He remembers her hands around his throat in the training room, her fingers squeezing as he choked. And he remembers Slade doing the exact same thing. He still has a bruise in the shape of a handprint barely hidden under the collar of his shirt. 

_“Don’t fucking lie to me!” _Rachel screams, just like Rose did earlier. Just like Willis used to whenever he couldn’t find the rent-money he’d already spent, or the food he’d already eaten. And then his fists would start flying, but _fuck this _, Jason’s not a little kid anymore, he can hold his own in a fight, but more than that, he’s not tied down, he’s not tied _up_, he can walk away. 

And so he does. He grabs his jacket and leaves. He hates that he’s being forced out of his own room but he doesn’t have to stand here and take this shit anymore.

He doesn’t have to stay.

He doesn’t have to…._Oh._

Rachel’s anger follows him out into the corridor, and everything snowballs from there. It’s not just her and Rose anymore. Now it’s Hank, and Dawn and Donna too. They’re all accusing him of...something? He doesn’t even know. He wants to shout he wants to scream, but his words are getting stuck in his throat, and the air is getting caught between his aching ribs. It doesn’t matter that he’s been holed up in his room disassociating for days—they’ve already made up their mind. It’s always the same. He’s rotten, and they can all see it. 

Bruce must have seen it too, that must be why he sent him away. 

“It’s okay if you’re angry,” Dawn says, and she sounds like every teacher he’s ever had that tries to excuse his behaviour before even considering that it might not have been him in the first place. She sounds like the officer in juvenile hall that told him he’d be back, his kind always ended up back there. Just a matter of time, kid.

“Fuck this,” he mutters as he turns to leave, but now Hank’s storming forward, with barely contained rage seeping into every part of his body language—_“Hey, we’re not done here, kid!”_—and Jason can’t help but flinch. 

“You people are insane,” he chokes out, unable to hide the trembling in his voice. He can feel his eyes stinging with unshed tears. He’s frustrated and angry, but more than that, he feels the desperate pain of abandonment pooling around in his stomach like a lead weight dragging him under the waves. “I’d rather be with Deathstroke than you assholes, you think everything’s my fault.”

_Except maybe they’re right, maybe—_

Dick comes storming into the tower, and for a moment Jason thinks _finally _; someone who can be on his side, because he’s outnumbered, and two Robins against five is much better odds—but Dick doesn’t spare Jason a second glance, and it sends the younger man into a tailspin.

There’s no one in his corner. No one has his back. His head’s pounding and his chest feels tight. He closes his eyes and he’s back in the basement, bound and gagged, while Slade’s breathing in his ear, and whispering that he’s worthless. He opens them again and Hank’s threatening to forget what team he’s on. 

He blinks, and _he’s still falling. _

And it has to end. 

Jason lets it overwhelm him—the fantasy that there’s only one way out of this, one solution to his problems, that he knows what to do, and how to fix it. How to fix everyone, including himself. If he’s the problem, then he has to take himself out of the equation completely. There’s only one thing he hasn’t tried yet.

_This has to end. _

One way or another. 

….

When Dick runs into the Tower, breathless, gun in hand, he doesn’t notice the way that everyone’s poised for a fight. He doesn’t understand why Gar looks so confused, or why Donna looks equal parts pissed and betrayed. He doesn’t see Dawn’s disappointment, or the way that Rachel and Hank are seething.

He doesn’t see that Jason’s struggling to hold it all together.

Until he isn’t anymore. 

The part of Dick’s brain that looks and sounds like some bizarro version of Bruce Wayne whispers that someone’s missing, and the thought of not being there for Jason again propels Dick forward. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he makes a beeline for the stairs that lead up to the roof, and skids to a stop at the sight that greets him when he opens the door. 

Jason’s standing on the ledge overlooking the city, and a very steep drop, looking like for all intents and purposes, he’s gonna jump.

Deathstroke might not be here in person, but he’s certainly left his mark. 

Every part of Jason looks eerily relaxed despite the dangerous predicament he’s in. The visage of Bruce that’s been stalking Dick ever since he abandoned Jason in the first place is strangely quiet now, and it gives the younger detective the chance to remember everything he’s ever been taught about coaxing jumpers back from the edge. 

“Jason?” 

“I keep falling.” The kid says, in a kind of matter-of-fact way that speaks volumes of his trauma. 

“You’re okay,” Dick says simply, like he should have done days ago. He should have insisted on checking Jason over himself. He should have sat down with him, talked with him, stayed with him. He should have listened when the Bruce in his head told him the kid needed help, but Dick had naively thought that if he could just put Deathstroke down once and for all, then that would solve all of their problems. 

He should have been in the Tower trying to help Jason. He should have been there, even if it was only to be a buffer between him and whatever shit had gone down with the other Titans while Dick was out running around the city like a maniac, playing right into Slade’s hands.

“It won’t stop.” Jason whispers brokenly, and Dick can hear the anguish in his voice, even though he can’t see his face. 

“Listen—”

“Bruce wasn’t the first one, you know, who tried to help me. I can make a list,” and he does. Jason even includes Dick in the tally, but he knows he doesn’t deserve to be there. He lied to Jason. He humiliated him. He pushed him away, all the while knowing that the likely outcome would be for Jason to push _back _. To test the boundaries. To get his attention. 

He just never expected the kid to put himself in harm’s way just to prove something. 

Bruce had told him three months ago that Jason idolised him; the original Robin, the great Dick Grayson. Bruce had warned him about the power that came with that kind of hero-worship, but Dick hadn’t listened. Not really. Sure, he’d relied on it when he needed Jason to take orders, to set a good example; he’d stroked his ego—spoke to his insecurities about being inferior by playing up his experience. _When you’re on point, they’re on point. They need your leadership Jason, you need to set the tone—_but Dick hadn’t considered what it would mean to then bench him, to show so little faith in the boy’s abilities when it counted, and to all but ban him from getting involved in something that Batman might have trusted his judgement on. 

And now Jason thinks he’s the reason behind all of this pain and suffering, when really that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

“I got a poison in me,” Jason whispers. “Shit spreads, it can infect even the healthiest people.”

“Why don’t you just step away?” Dick tries carefully, and when the boy shakes his head, Dick tries again. “Step away from the ledge, Jason.”

But he doesn’t move, and so Dick tries a different tactic—he maintains a careful distance so that Jason doesn’t feel crowded, and he sits on the ledge, his own legs hanging over the edge of the roof. Swinging in the breeze, with a kind of nonchalance that hides the fact that he can hear the music of the circus from the night his parents fell creeping into his brain like an earworm that’s lasted through the centuries. 

“Okay then, we can just sit up here quietly, _together_.” 

He puts special emphasis on that last word. He wants to scream that Jason’s not alone, that Dick’s here for him, literally, and figuratively. He should have made that clear from the get-go. He should have drummed it into the kid’s head when he was throwing his fists in the training room. He should have forced him to rest, to sleep, to try and process all of the shit that went down. He didn’t do it then, but he’s doing it now. 

He just hopes it’ll be enough. 

“I fucked it all up, coming here.” Jason mumbles, his words taking on a depressed slur, and Dick almost doesn’t hear him over the breeze from being out in the open air. Jason’s spiralling. He’s blaming himself for things that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him, but they’re clearly wounds that have been left to fester over time. “It follows me like a curse—”

“Nothing’s following _you_—”

“I’m the reason they all hate each other. The reason that kid got shot, the reason this place won’t work. But I can fix it.”

Dick doesn’t like the sound of that, and can’t listen to it anymore. Not because he doesn’t want to—not because he doesn’t want to give Jason the time of day—he _ does _, he wants to be there for him, he wants to help, but he can’t sit back and listen to Jason tear into himself anymore, not when he knows how to make things right. Not when he knows who’s really to blame. 

“Wait!” Dick says when Jason’s foot teeters over the edge. “Can I tell you something? Something I’ve never told anyone.”

He knows he’s playing on the fact that Jason’s desperate for them to bond, for there to be a brotherly connection between the two of them—but the kid’s life is on the line, so what better way to save him than to finally put his trust in him. 

He thinks of Bruce’s words at the church...or, at least, his own fractured mind’s version of Bruce. _You just have to tell the truth _. He thought it would have been too hard then, too painful, too much at stake. But if confiding in Jason keeps him from diving down to the sidewalk below, then it’s a risk Dick’s willing to take. 

He never should have let his own ghosts crowd the Tower as much as he had, and it’s not fair for them to haunt Jason the way they haunt Dick. 

“It’s not you, you’re not the poison. It’s me.” Dick says all at once. “It’s my fault. It’s this secret that’s making us all sick. My secret.”

He takes a deep breath, and lets it out through pursed lips. 

“I caused all of this, I did something...five years ago. Something unforgivable.”

Five years of silence, five years of hiding has lead to this moment. He’s perched on the edge of a roof, desperately trying to stop Jason from jumping, so he’s forcing himself to take the plunge instead. To tell the truth. 

“I killed Deathstroke’s son.” 

The words tumble out of him, and Dick feels sick to his stomach. He thinks about Jericho’s face in the record store, and how if Dick had just left him there, then none of this would have happened. He thinks about how excited the kid had been when he realised Dick was a Titan—looking up at him the same way Jason had when they first met. Robin’s great reputation. 

A cruel lie. 

He thinks about the sound of Deathstroke’s blade piercing Jericho’s chest when it should have been his own ribcage cracking under the pressure of the katana. He thinks about Slade’s anger, the power behind his attack, his speed, his agility, his conviction—_ the Titans act like heroes but they’re hypocrites _—He thinks about how Slade must have dragged his son’s body away because it wasn’t there when Dick woke up. 

He feels sick.

He looks down at the city underneath him, at the cars going by, at the people out walking. They have no idea what he’s done, the horrors he’s capable of…. He takes another deep breath, and it hitches in his throat for a second.

He doesn’t see if his words are enough to bring Jason back from the brink.

Just as Dick moves to look up, a dark shadow rushes past him, sprinting from out of nowhere only to yank Jason away from the edge. The figure and Jason topple backwards, rolling and skidding painfully against the gravelled rooftop until they come to a sudden stop.

It happens so quickly that Dick feels like an age passes before reality kicks in and he realises that Jason has been tackled to safety while he was distracted by Dick’s confession. For a second, he even thinks he might be hallucinating again, but this isn’t his torn psyche using Bruce as an outlet for his own self-hatred. No. It’s _Batman_, and he’s _real _. 

He must have seen the two of them on the roof and thought..._ god, _what he must have thought?

Dick scrambles to his feet and stumbles across the roof to get over to them. 

Jason’s face is only half-obscured by the dark knight’s distinct black cape. He’s staring up at his saviour all wide-eyed, mouth agape in shock, and the two of them look like statues, frozen in battle—Batman towering over Jason as he lies prone on the ground—until suddenly the cowl’s pulled back and the raw-emotion on their father's face is laid bare. 

Bruce looks _devastated_, and just like that, as though a dam had been broken, all of Jason’s pain comes rushing out of him, and he’s shaking so hard as he sobs that for a second Dick panics that the kid’s having a seizure. 

“What were you thinking?” Bruce asks desperately, _quietly _, almost like a hiss without the savage undertone—and it’s not rage Dick can hear in the older man’s voice, it’s fear—and as much as it must scare Jason to see his guardian seemingly aiming his anger at him, Dick can see the moment it hits home—the enormity of it all. 

Jason doesn’t answer, instead he starts trying to curl in on himself, half-rocking as he tries in vain to get free from out of Batman’s grip. He’s saying he’s sorry over and over and over again, his breath hitching as he cries and cries through his shame. “I just want it to stop, Bruce please, I can’t, B—I can’t…I just want it to stop, please, please, please make it stop.”

Jason lets out a wail of grief that sees Dick drop to his knees beside the two of them. 

“_Jay,_” Bruce whispers as he loosens his grip to better hold his youngest through his sobbing. 

“No, no, no, don’t…._ please don’t leave_, don’t go, I’ll be good, _I will, I will!_” Jason promises with a strangled cry as he misunderstands the Bat’s intentions, but Bruce just shushes him softly as he pulls the boy into his arms. At the same time, he reaches out to grab a hold of the material of Dick’s shirt to pull him in too, until all three of them are huddled together under the warm familiarity of Batman’s cape; their little family of broken wings. He presses a kiss to Jason’s temple as the boy buries himself in Batman’s chest—still inconsolable in his misery, but his cries are getting quieter and quieter. 

_Weaker. _

It’s not long before Jason’s sobbing turns into shallow gasps instead, and his eyes—still red and swollen from bawling—go wide all of a sudden. He fumbles to get Bruce’s attention, his hands flapping. His mouth opening and closing like a fish floundering on dry land and his lips are so pale that they’re almost blue. Wait…

Dick doesn’t hesitate to lift up Jason’s shirt as the boy squirms, and he lets out a curse at the deep, dark bruising he finds there around the kid’s chest. From sight alone, he’d think the bones were fractured, but the landing from Bruce’s save must have been the last straw. One of his ribs must have punctured his lung, and now he can’t breathe.

“Shit, B—” Dick mutters, but Batman’s seen it too, and the grim determination in his face tells Dick that he’s come to the same conclusion. Grayson jumps to his feet to grab the door and hold it open, just as Bruce goes from cradling Jason on the ground, to carrying him in his arms. 

“..._ d..ad _..” Jason stutters in pain as he starts to panic when he can’t even speak. His head feels like it might explode but his chest? His chest is fit to burst. He’s on fire, and he tries to scramble out of Bruce’s hold in a hypoxic frenzy of tangled limbs, but Batman just holds him tighter and tells him to _calm down, it’s gonna be okay_, as he races them back down to the Tower. 

The jostled movements make Jason cry out, but there’s not enough air in his lungs to even make a sound anymore. Black spots dance in front of him, everything starts to fade, and as Jason’s vision goes grey, the last thing he hears is his father’s voice saying;_ easy son, I’ve got you, just stay with me, stay... _before he finally _falls _, unconscious, in Bruce Wayne’s arms. 

  
  


tbc

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to say hello on [tumblr](http://mellaithwen.tumblr.com/)!


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